As has been my tradition for the past few years, I’ve shared with you my most listened-to music. This year, however; I also wanted to share the music I was most excited about—the music that gets lost in the data when you don’t adjust for Misophonia, or listening to music with friends, or just life and music happening around you in general.

I joined Facebook back in 2006 when it first opened to the general public. I did this mostly because I was involved in building a social network platform to help artists, record labels, and management companies take their web presence back from MySpace. Fast-forward 11 years: I’m focusing more on my own music, Facebook is the new MySpace, and here I am trying to take back ownership of my web presence from them.

I’ve been playing gut strings on my basses for at least as long as I have been playing ukulele (10+ years). I’ve always wanted to try them on my ukulele, but was apprehensive about drastically changing the vibe of my main axe. I finally pulled the trigger on some Aquila gut strings, and thought it might be helpful to put my thoughts down here, but first some background…